New Friends
by mymuse1990
Summary: a crossover of yu yu hakusho and star ocean ex. Me and my sister are working on this one together! new! When Kurama and Rena meet, and when the rest of the Yu Yu Hakusho crew gets involved, its sure to be a fun time!


Collaboration

Jami and Megan Montgomery

Characters:

Megan: Kurama (Yu Yu Hakusho)

Jami: Rena (Star Ocean EX)

_Story is set in modern day Texas!! It is the summertime, and Kurama is at the library. Rena walks in to look for a book on spaceships when she notices Kurama sitting at a secluded table in a quiet corner and goes to join him. And so….our story begins!!!_

"Hi…may I sit here?" the quiet blue haired girl asked as she approached the table. Every other table was taken by two or three people engrossed in their selected books. The table where the red headed boy sat was otherwise unoccupied. Rena liked studying better that way.

"Sure. You may sit," Kurama answered her. "I'm Kurama. Where are you from? I've never seen clothes of your style before." Looking around, he noticed that while he had been engrossed in his reading, the library had filled up quite a bit.

Sitting, Rena smiled at him, closing both eyes when she did. She opened them again and looked at him. "Rena. I'm from a land far from here. You won't have heard of it, I'm sure. Everybody dresses like this there. What about you? You seem different from everyone else, even though you don't differ in your appearance."

"You would be correct. I've lived here all of my life, but before I was born in this human body, I lived as a demon in the spirit world."

Rena sweat dropped when she heard him. "A…..demon?" she asked him.

"Yes. I was a master thief in my past life. I was Yoko, the Fox Demon."

Rena looked at him again. This red haired boy with the green eyes didn't look like he could be dangerous. Of course, neither had Cloude, and he had packed quite a whollup when given the incentive. "Oh….that's….interesting….maybe I should sit somewhere else…" Rena stood to go.

"You don't have to worry. I don't bite. I'm really a nice guy, I just have a bad past." Kurama smiled at her.

Rena sat down again heavily, holding her book to her chest as if she still wanted to leave. Slowly, she set it on the table and opened it to a page she had marked while skimming through it. She lowered her eyes to the page and started to read, every so often looking up at the strange boy sitting across from her.

Kurama felt her tension. It was like it was burning him. He thought to himself, 'maybe I shouldn't have said that. It was stupid to tell her that I was a demon this quickly.' Shaking his head and dropping his book to the table, he nestled his head in his hands.

Rena looked up again when the book hit the table, jumping a bit. He looked so lonely…so broken. She wondered suddenly if he had many friends…and if he did, how many of them knew that he was a demon. She almost laughed at the thought of humans being so encouraging, so inviting, to something that they all feared.

Suddenly there was a beeping noise. Kurama looked at his watch and turned off the alarm. He then turned to Rena. "My friends and I planned to eat dinner. Would you like to join us?"

She smiled a bit. So he did have friends. She was a bit alarmed at the invitation. They had, after all, just met. Of course, Claude had spent the night at her house the first day they had met. Things werent so different here in his world after all. She accepted the invitation and left the library at Kurama's side.

"We'd better hurry. It looks like it's almost rush hour. The table are going to fill up quickly. We're meeting at Jeff's Pizza Parlor. Do you like pizza?" he asked, smiling over at Rena and wondering if she still felt awkward around him because of his demon past.

Rena was watching her feet as she walked, for some reason embarrassed and shy around him. She looked up when he spoke to her. "Yes, of course," she answered. She looked away quickly, hoping Kurama wouldn't catch on to the lie. She remember Claude talking about pizza, but he made it sound gross. Who ate cheese on bread with red stuff in between? And adding meat on top? It was disgusting. For some reason though, she didn't want to dissapoint her new friend, so she went along with it.

Kurama didn't notice that she had looked away too quickly; he was looking for the street where the restaurant was located. The town seemed strange at this time because there were so many people rushing about. He looked back at Rena and said, "That's good, but I think I've gotten kind of turned around." He dug his phone out of his pocket to contact his friends to make sure he was on the right track. He dialed Yusuke's number and waited for him to answer.

Rena looked around her as Kurama used his communications device. She remembered Claude having one similar to it. It hadn't worked very well in her world. She was too busy looking at all the signs and lights to notice that she was slowly falling behind Kurama, and getting lost in the crowd in the process. She didn't notice until she realized she couldn't hear him talking anymore. Thinking he'd hung up, she'd looked to the side to ask him a question, only to find him gone. And no sight of the tall red head anywhere.

"Thanks for the help, Yusuke. Sorry that I had to call you. Oh, and I forgot to mention…I met a new friend at the library and I'm bringing her along. Please, don't you or Kuwabara tease me around her. She's a nice girl and she already has a strange feeling about me. I told her I'm a demon already so she's timid. Well, I've gotta go. I'll see ya'll when we get there." He hung up the phone and then turned to where he thought Rena would be standing, but she wasn't there. He then looked all around him, and started shouting her name. He didn't see her anywhere, and he couldn't hear her responding to his calls. He was getting worried. She didn't seem to know this world. He was afraid of what might happen to her.

Rena was standing on a bench looking all around her, trying to find Kurama. She was becoming a bit frightened. She didn't know this place, and she wasn't really sure where she was. And besides that, it was getting darker by the minute. She didn't want to be caught on the street when night fell. Even in her world, girls knew better than to be out at night time. "Kurama!" she called again, this time a note of panic in her voice. If only he could hear her…

Kurama couldn't hear Rena in his human form, but he thought, maybe, Yoko could. He walked into an alley and took out the potion he had acquired in the dark tournament, taking a small sip. In a few minutes, he had turned into Yoko Kurama. He listened keenly with his fox ears and was able to pick up Rena's cries.

Rena was getting scared now. She couldn't see or hear the red head she was supposed to be accompanying. She was lost as well. Being new to the area, she had no idea where she was supposed to be heading, or even how to get back to where she had been. So she sat down on the corner of the street, surrounded by strangers, and dropped her head into her hands.

Kurama ran towards her voice, swerving around the oblivious crowd of people. When he neared the spot he had heard the cries from, he looked around for Rena. He saw her sitting on the corner, ran over to her, and scooped her into his arms, rushing into the nearest alley so the surrounding humans wouldn't see him in his demon form.

Rena was surprised as someone lifted her off the street and carried her to an alley. She thought for a moment that it was Kurama, but when she looked up, a man with long white hair and pointed ears was holding her. She screamed and started pushing at his chest, trying to get free. She just knew he was going to do something bad to her. Why else would he abduct her and bring her to an alley?

"Calm down, Rena! It's me! Kurama!" he shouted. "I changed to my demon form so I could find you! I couldn't hear you in my human form!" He realized that she was still pushing and didn't really believe him. He couldn't blame her; this form was so different from his human form. He then softly started counting to himself backwards from five. When he reached one, he turned back into his human form.

Rena looked up at him from where she stood against the far wall, having finally gotten out of his arms. She was surprised to see that he was the red head she remembered. She blinked…then sweat dropped again, falling to her knees, her hand pressed to her heart. "Oh Kurama…you scared me…" She smiled, her eyes closed, trying to make her quickly beating heart slow down a bit.

Kurama chuckled. "Sorry," he apologized. "I found out from Yusuke where the parlor is. It's just around the corner. We can still meet them for dinner. I don't know for sure who all is coming. Yusuke had said that he was still texting our other friends." He stretched his hand out towards her, so that he could lead her there.

Rena nodded, and took the hand Kurama offered her. She knew she should be scared of him. He was a demon, after all, but he had used those powers to find her and help her. How could she be scared of that? She let him lead her to meet his friends, wondering if they were as eccentric as the demon that stood before her. She wasn't sure what she would do or say if they all had pointed ears and sharp teeth. She laughed at the thought, imagining herself running from a band of green skinned weirdos, but stopped when she noticed Kurama looking at her.

He wondered why she was laughing. She looked scared, even though she was laughing. Was she afraid that all of his friends would be demons? Which most of them were…so he couldn't blame her there. He wondered how she would react to some of his friends' appearances. It was too late to think about that now though, because the parlor was right in front of them. Yusuke had already spotted them and was motioning them inside.

Rena smiled at the goofy grin on the face of Kurama's friend. He was cute, with his black hair and green clothes, but he was a bit on the weird side as well. The goofy smile didn't leave his face as she and Kurama joined him, and she got the feeling that he was just barely holding himself back from saying something. This one was Yusuke. Another red head walked in then, only his hair was more carrot colored than Kurama's. This one was loud…obnoxious almost. And he missed the chair trying to sit down and wound up on the floor. He had eyes only for Rena and introduced himself loudly. "Kuwabara?" she repeated. Sounded like some kind of reptile.

Kurama chuckled at Kuwabara's foolishness. Kuwabara was always fooling around whenever there was a pretty girl in sight. 'Where is Hiei? He always has some sort of comment when Kuwabara is making a fool of himself.' He started to look around, but knew that even if Hiei was there, he probably wouldn't see him. Then, to his side, he heard Hiei's remark. "Calm down you fool. Can't you see she's already with someone?" Kurama turned to Hiei and chuckled and said, "I just met her at the library. She's a friend. Rena, this is Hiei."

Rena nodded at the new arrival, noting that he was just a little bit taller than she was. Now she didn't feel like such a shrimp among all these tall boys. Of course, the only reason he was taller was because of the mountain of hair standing straight up on his head. She smiled at the thought of all that hair flattened out, and how short he would be then. Hiei met her gaze evenly, almost as if he could see the thoughts in her head. She quickly forced them away and focused again on the conversation at hand. Yusuke and Kuwabara were in some kind of heated debate that Kurama was refereeing. Hiei simply sat to the side, arms crossed, eyes closed. Rena liked these guys, but she wondered if they had any girl friends.

Kurama sighed as Yusuke and Kuwabara debated. He wondered who all was going to show, but he didn't feel like getting in the middle of the argument. So instead he picked up his phone and started texting their friends to see who was coming. The first one he texted was Keiko. She said she and the girls were on their way. Kuwabara was about to text and ask how close they were when he heard their laughter carry through the doorway. He turned and saw the girls enter the doorway, several bags in their hands. Product of their shopping. Kurama waved them over.

Rena looked up as the girls joined the group, having to pull up an extra table. The waitress rolled her eyes at the noisy group of teenagers sitting at her table. She took their drink orders and then returned to the kitchen so that the group could be loud again. Kurama introduced Rena to a girl named Keiko, Yukina, Botan, and one other girl who's name Rena couldn't really remember. She did remember however that she was Kuwabara's sister. Rena laughed at the looks she kept giving her brother as he continued to make a fool of himself.


End file.
